For most people, the ferris wheel of life is satisfying enough1. Between the worldly pleasures, there is no catalyst to get off the ride and walk through the rainy, gray amusement park. But if you walk long enough, it becomes enjoyable, thrilling in fact. The cold water on your face becomes the most beautiful thing you’ve ever felt.
I like to think I’ve seen from the top of the ferris wheel. Not to say the view is bad, but when wearing a varsity backpack you see a smiling, naked yogi in the Himalayas2, you know something’s beyond the town limits. When you’re twenty, and a Colombian man offers you a cup of purple, you’re certain.
If you walk in the rain long enough, they say, you will find tranquility on rollercoasters3, joy waiting in line, and eternal warmth in blizzards4. But the real gold is seeing the world as it is.
If the above is true, certainly you’d drive past it on rural Iowa billboards. The paradox is that enlightenment is evolutionary unselecting.5 The very nature of these insights dissolves wanting to be known or to persuade. Most enlightened people live quiet lives, as professors and butchers6. You’ll never see an Instagram post announcing Nirvana. The only accounts are from those still walking, those who’ve walked once and now sell rainwater7, or those who’ve surfaced briefly to describe treasure chests they can’t bring back8. The ones who have swam the deepest – their reports never left the event horizon.
Enlightenment is also invisible. Schwarzenegger’s evidence is waxed. The monastic competition will require fMRI scans hanging on a clothesline. An eight-percent thicker cortex also changes your relationship to reality. Morality transforms. To the enlightened, the world is already perfect. Suffering, striving, and the search as an expression of nature: the unfolding of the universe. Enlightenment no better than darkness.
Even if convinced, most people are not on the rides. They’re at the tollbooths or sweeping vomit by the merry-go-round. Seeking truth is easier by candlelight than in dark. Even Buddha lived in a kingdom. Yet choice is always there. Siddhartha left his son on the night he was born.
The walk is not a promenade. It’s a lonely pilgrimage, where you hear laughter of children with ice-cream cones and watch couples making out by the popcorn stand. It is spending weeks alone in a room with your thoughts, while a monkey bangs on the doors. There is no finish line. No waving and cheering. Soon, your clothes are soaked and you have to strip. You see that under the Snoopy costume is a boy with a cafeteria tray in the stall. Below that, an ancient, terrified ape with yellow eyes and a life-jacket.9 Keep going, and you find no one.10
Now you’re naked at the carnival. You fall knee-deep into a puddle. The world around you disappears.11 Some return at this point. But if you keep swimming, they say, you’ll find oceans so still that stones skip indefinitely.
I had a friend who’d walk, just after his four-year Google vesting cliff. He’s still on the white wooden unicorn. But now wearing a Dora backpack, wife’s purse, and lugging an investor’s briefcase.12 Better to cash in on arcade tickets when you’re young.13 You can always earn later. If you win, you won’t even need the money. But maybe letting go is easier after achievement. Like Jim Carrey, one needs to merry-go-round a few times before they get dizzy.14
She reaches for her dad’s hand, but he’s thinking if his Tesla will get towed. We buy a large bag of popcorn (by a truck with beautifully painted tires). He’s planning which rides to go on, so tastes only a quarter of it. Eighty years of existence becomes eight years of life. It started raining. We all rushed under the eaves. Except his daughter. She’s playing in the puddle.
Long before the purple cup, I held a red cup. We were discussing college waitlists, while waiting for someone to swing off the chandelier into the pool. When I graduated, my job was to put fresh coats of paint on hot dog truck tires that were painted just last week (and spend two weeks on why crimson over burgundy will yield 3% more popcorn sales). Now a screw falls from the sky. The park is lifting off, rollercoasters unraveling. A striped tent soars as a Botero-esque man clings to the stake. Tollbooth operator now a glass screen. In a gilded world, we forgot that the only thing ever real was the rain. That the only thing truly human was being, not thinking.
Enlightenment has a waiver. The well of creativity overflows with suffering. Without it we’d not have Van Goghs and Dostoevskys. We know Elon Musk, not his ayahuasca-drinking brother. You don’t see monks penning Moby Dicks.15 Or writing essays at sunrise about why they should stop. The well gushes with joy too, such as love letters, but for most those are desert floods, blue-moon chandelier-swings. Does hunting the monkey kill the human?
Or does it uncage the human, a life watching through simian bars? You step outside barefoot and walk two moons without a single thought. Carnival bulbs brighter, the nutcracker soldiers louder. When you no longer care about jean grass-stains, the world becomes a playground. Summer afternoons, jumping off the school bus, bolting down the asphalt to catch the Arthur episode16. The well becomes a lake, but you’re no longer thirsty. Yet, even lakes overflow.17 Rumi saw the world as a tavern. We are all lost drunkards trying to find our way home.
Drunks wish to forget their first beer. Nobody enlightened wishes to return. One wrote that he’d choose a single day knowing over a lifetime unknowing.18 Faust traded his soul for the world. Buddha, the world for his soul. I call this Buddha’s Bargain.19
Maybe it is not whether to walk, but how far. Healthline articles say: Short Stroll in the Rain Clears Your Head. So spring showers become floods. Something has your leg. Gasping for air. Then a hand. He’s smiling. Few hairs spill from his polo. It’s his birthday.20 On Jack Dorsey’s yacht, a quiet view of the Botero man dangling in the sky. The chai has notes of cardamom. The backpack thrown on the deck after a long day. The Beatles played here. By the dock, a ferry to town.21 Under a tree, sat the former prince. The island is beautiful, but it is not the destination. Something greater lies beyond.
The real expedition begins past paradise. When you’re naked, shivering, and you hear thunderbolts— and in your hand all you have are bottled words from distant sailors.22 To know that even if you make it, the world you return to will have changed.
Buddhist Dukkha’s translation as “suffering” is somewhat heavy. Carole King puts it better in Been to Canaan: “Though I’m content with myself, sometimes I long to be somewhere else.” ↩︎
The Zen monk Ryokan lived in extreme simplicity. One night a thief broke into his hut but found nothing to steal. Ryokan, not wanting the man to leave empty-handed, offered him the clothes off his back. After the thief departed, Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.” ↩︎
Tummo meditation can increase body temperatures up to 38.3 °C (100.9 °F). While studied for physiological effects, Tibetan Buddhists use the inner fire for profound states of enlightenment. Link ↩︎
This is the Enlightenment Paradox. In most fields you have survivorship bias, but with enlightenment you hear only those who haven’t reached the end. ↩︎
One day, while meditating, the Brahmin Kaushika is disturbed by a bird. With his gaze, he burns it, proud of his powers. He is told to seek wisdom from a man in Mithila, who he soon realizes is a butcher. Dharmavyādha teaches him that spiritual wisdom lives not only in ascetics, but in anyone who performs their duty with honor. Link ↩︎
Osho was a polarizing spiritual leader in the 70s, famously known for his 93 Rolls-Royces, diamond watches, and followers who’d do anything he asked. When people will give you their life, it’s hard not to sell rainwater. ↩︎
Jiddu Krishamurthy, when asked why he continued to speak after so many years and at his age of eight-five, he responded: “When one sees something true and beautiful one wants to tell people about it, out of affection, out of compassion, out of love. And if there are those who are not interested, that is all right. Can you ask a flower why it grows, why it has perfume? It is for the same reason that the speaker talks.” ↩︎
Most human activity is fear of drowning, even if we think we’re building boats for fun. ↩︎
Sartre said “existence precedes essence”, but maybe it’s the reverse? If we strip away the identities, only essence remains. ↩︎
In Buddhism, this is the “Dark Night of the Soul”, a period of difficult reintegration. Still oceans where nothing skips. ↩︎
People go to monasteries for the same reason they go to university. You need someone to lock you in the amusement park bathroom. ↩︎
Traditions say after family and career, but that’s partly to sustain society. When you’re young, you have less to risk, your brain is more plastic, and your back hurts less. ↩︎
Jim Carrey: “I think everybody should get rich and famous so they can see that it’s not the answer.” One needs a proxy of their ultimate desire to let go. For some, that is toes in the pool, for others jumping off the diving board. This is the Attachment Paradox. ↩︎
Maybe there aren’t well known novels, because there aren’t many enlightened people. But creativity can exist without ego. Children have imaginative worlds. Hindu mythology is attributed to enlightened sages, such as Vyasa. Maybe the creativity is there but the desire to publish it is not. ↩︎
Arthur Theme: “You got to listen to your heart. Listen to the beat. Listen to the rhythm. The rhythm of the street. Open up your eyes. Open up your ears. Get together and make things better.” ↩︎
Or is it suffering seeing others drink from wells, while standing on lakes? ↩︎
Shinzen Young: “You don’t know what you’re saying. You can’t take any credit for it whatsoever. It just happens, like a leaf falling from the tree. Enlightenment is like falling off a cliff that never ends, and you’ve acclimatized to it. That’s why the Zen people say it’s like riding an ox backwards.” Link ↩︎
To twist Mill’s question: “Is it better to be Socrates thinking, or Buddha still?” ↩︎
Jack Dorsey spent his birthday at a 10-day Vipassana retreat. It’s on Twitter. Link ↩︎
Pleasurable states such as Jhanas are tailwinds, but Buddha warned that they are not ends in themselves. Start-ups now teach this “bliss on demand”. Link ↩︎
In Zen, the three essentials for the path: Great Faith—trust in the practice and your capacity for awakening. Great Doubt—penetrating inquiry into the nature of reality. Great Determination—unwavering resolve to persist. ↩︎